And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine

These days when we’re scrolling through the internet, we are not surprised when pictures of friends and cute animal videos are occasionally interspersed with images of natural disasters, injustice or violence. But what are the consequences of randomly being exposed to these images, to the billions of images competing for our attention online? Swedish directors Axel Danielson and Maximilien van Aertryck follow the rise of our current visual culture in the sharp found footage film And the King Said: What a Fantastic Machine. From the birth of the camera obscura to the screening of the first moving film and from the invention of the webcam to the first viral video, this witty and thought-provoking documentary offers an emblematic study of cinema and the social history it creates.